Machine intelligence company Graphcore raises $30 million Series B

UK startup Graphcore, a machine intelligence company, has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round led by Atomico.

Graphcore produces an Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU), the first processor designed specifically for machine intelligence, which the company says will be 10x to 100x faster than other hardware. The company is preparing to deliver its first IPU to customers later this year.

"Training machine intelligence models in minutes rather than days or weeks will profoundly transform how developers work, how they experiment and the results they will see," said Greg Brockman of OpenAI, an angel investor in the round. "Being able to experiment across a much broader front, at a much faster pace will create new breakthroughs and will allow us to combine many machine intelligence techniques to jumpstart progress."

The startup is headquartered in Bristol, UK, and is backed by several venture capital funds and strategic investors including Amadeus Capital Partners, Atomico, C4 Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, Draper Esprit, Foundation Capital, Pitango Venture Capital, Robert Bosch Venture Capital and Samsung Catalyst Fund.

Read more: PR Newswire (Press release)